Last week’s Ad Club ‘Best of DC’ event at Google’s DC headquarters was pretty fascinating. The rise of mobile is something every marketer needs to be aware of, and be able to do right. The numbers thrown around regarding website hits via mobile vs. desktop were eye opening. I didn’t get the exact numbers down, but something like 17+% of all financial sites were visited via mobile in the last year. And around a quarter of all restaurant sites. And these numbers are only growing.

A big thanks to Google for hosting the event. Dan Taylor, Director, Google Display Network and Brian McDevitt, Google’s Director of Mobile Display did an admirable job of answering every question thrown their way – marketing and techie alike.

However, as one who’s been on the delivery end of many a computer-based, multi-media presentation, only to see them go awry when the imbedded video content doesn’t play as desired, I was encouraged (happy?) to see that Google is, in fact, as fallible as the rest of us. That’s right. Both Dan and Brian gave multi-media presentations, broadcast on large screens to an audience of 50+. And wouldn’t you know it – the imbedded video in both presentations failed to play. Even after the uncomfortable re-start-look-for-the-original-video-file exercise we’ve all found ourselves in before, the videos still didn’t play.

Refreshing, isn’t it? Even with all that brainpower, all that technology, all those algorithms, turns out even Google can’t take the human out of the Google.

btw, if you want to see those videos, they’re posted here on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=eteucIGSaYI